rec.autos.simulators

First of all I love GPL but am sick of its disciples in this newsgroup
shooting down every suggestion or complaint about this sim.  For example -
There's no speedometer in the***pit view as there shouldn't be because it
wasn't there, but there should be a toggle for mph to be overlayed ala the
arcade view.  Now I'm sure the purists will flame that it wasn't there in
real life - well guess what?  In real life you weren't looking at a 19" 2
dimensional computer monitor, were you?  A speedometer will help you judge
you speed and compensate for the lack of sensation and stereoscopic vision.

I remember a post about how you could download a patch to slow down the
quick glance feature to better simulate the speed of the driver's head as he
looked left or right - Jesus ***ing christ!!  There should be a patch to
speed it up to compensate for the lack of peripheral vision.

If you race in the arcade view you might as well be labeled a heretic and
banned from any online racing, but hey let's face it, in real life you can
feel the car shifting it's center of gravity and the back end losing grip.
Racing in the arcade view allows you to see what you can't feel.   For me
racing in the***pit view is more fun but I'm not as fast.  Now, I think
that the more you practice you can compensate and become faster in the
***pit view, but what your really doing is learning how to figure out the
sim and not drive better.  In reality,when your in a corner and the back end
starts to come out do you really realize that because what you see or what
you feel?  Think about it.

Let's hear some feedback.

Thanks
JH

Really?  Never heard of it and would like to try
it, though I'd rather speed it up too.  Can the
angle that the view turns be adjusted?

In a sim, it's definitely what you see, with a
good bit of what you hear mixed in.  I use
the in-car view, though, because it's a driving
sim and not a flying sim (flying behind the car).

--
Pat Dotson
IMPACT Motorsports
http://www.impactmotorsports.com/pd.html

I am a GPL fan beyond a doubt.  It is by far the superior driving/racing
sim. available.  It has one fatal flaw in my books--the lack of pitting,
which renders one out of a race even for a very minor mechanical or driving
problem that would have been corrected in the pits in '67.  I could care
less about animated pit crew, etc...just have a time "penalty" that you sit
in your stall before you can go on either fully or partially repaired.  I
really don't think it would be that difficult to program compared to the
rest of what's in the game.

Anyway, back to your point, I think anything that can provide greater
accessibility to a very hard product to master (and a masterpiece) only
benefits all of us--even the purists--as the only way we'll see another GPL
is if someone can figure out how to blend *** sim. qualities and
popularity (not an easy match).

We'll see if another master can pull it off with GP3.

Marc.

[snip]

[snipped again]

Yes, but it's seems to me (as has been written by many others before me)
that to willingly go online and race others in a driving view where you
don't have mirrors is, at best, somewhat cold-hearted.

DK

        Probably the biggest reason why I wouldn't want it there is because I
want to drive a SIM.  Not an arcadish Sim.  Sounds like the original
poster wanted a Sim that had body movements of GPL but wanted a NFS type
of game.

--
=========================================
Mike Barlow of Barlow Racing?
=========================================
http://members.xoom.com/BarlowRacing/

Racing online with the help of......

Race Communications Association
Holodyne Engineering
Mystic Music
(have Your !!Name/Address!! placed here)

        If you look at the NASCAR groups, you'll find the exact same
thing.
People that swear that if the Sim isn't exactly like the real thing then
it's no good.  Some are complaining that the GPL tracks should not be
used in N3 because those tracks don't exist in the same configuration
anymore.  I'd assume that if there was a following for Need for Speed,
there would be the exact same thing there too.  Even most of the flight
sim players are the same way.. if it's not original, it's no good.  No
matter what it is, Sim, Types of racing, food preparation even...  If
it's not original, it's no good.

        So, If you don't agree with something, state your mind.  *BUT*
be very
careful how you do that.
--
=========================================
Mike Barlow of Barlow Racing?
=========================================
http://members.xoom.com/BarlowRacing/

Racing online with the help of......

Race Communications Association
Holodyne Engineering
Mystic Music
(have Your !!Name/Address!! placed here)

More important than the apparent advantage of not being distracted from the guy
behind is missing the challenge of driving well while seeing an aggressive
competitor in your mirrors from the***pit view...a significant part of the
real racing experience which is missing from the chase view.

Marty

Don't forget that one of the big goals of Matt Sentell's during his design
phase was to replicate as closely as possible the racing in that era, within
the confines of your PC and its crude display system.  Actually I fully
agree with most, but not all, of the design decisions.  Some folks wanted
telemetry as well - clearly that wasn't part of racing in the 60's but to
display some simple graphs on the screen would have been "trivial", but
there was no way telemetry was going to feature in GPL  :-)

Mike.

Hi Marc,

I'm sure you'll appreciate that very few faults were fixed during a race in
the 60's, and to implement an entire pitting facility for the player and AI
would have been nice, BUT with very little cost benefit, IMO.  I was on the
test team as you may recall, and I know just how much pressure the
developers were under to ship GPL with its current feature-set, never mind
considering adding a whole load more stuff.  Like all "wants", it's a kind
of "wait for the next version" situation.  Whatever that will be, I don't
know - NASCAR I presume.

Mike.

For me GPL is the only sim where I go faster with the***pit view, because
all the feedback is better in the***pit view (locking tyres etc.), even
the FF, IIRC.
I also don't like the chase view in GPL because the car seems to be floating
on the track. For me it's only useful for the first laps on a new track,
because I can see better which line I have to go.
Well, I'm sucking in GPL anyway...

CU
Zolli

Perhaps there should be mirrors in the arcade view as well - I mean why
bother to have the arcade view at all if it's half-assed??

JH

That would absolutely GREAT to have ,in order to compensate for the lack
of Field-of-View and g-forces in relation to  the real thing.
(and not for "arcade" reasons,as suggested by somebody else in this
 thread)
The Force-feedback chair that is on the way might provide
some degree of G-force sensory input to the body,but there
is still the lack a full understanding of the orientation of the
car and which way it is moving in relation to its surroundings
due to the limited field-of-view.
One of the few ways this could be provided is by
displaying that that in analog form on the edge of the screen.
I am sure that this would have a HUGE impact on situation
awareness (which you have you have in real-life cars, but very little
in pc simulations.)

--
Robert S?derberg

If replying by mail,remove the word  INGENSPAM from the adress.

Quitting a full race 90% of the way through when you are in the lead because
you grazed an armco just slightly is disgusting when you can make it back to
your pit stall and sit there for 30 seconds while an invisible pit crew
gives you a new wheel and tire and a little count down timer ticks away.
You drove away as you would have in the real race (back at 100% mobility),
but with a minor time penalty.  I don't think the relative effort to program
this would have been too great.  It is certainly in another universe with
weather, which would be phenomenally complex to add and resource intensive
to run.

Had GPL been more popular, it could have been patched in.  As it stands, I
am glad some good souls took the time and effort to include great FFB.

Marc.